WOW Insider

Addon Spotlight: Talented

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, AddOn Spotlight, Talents

Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight, the quiet home of mod enthusiasts amongst the whirlwind of breaking news that is WoW Insider. Reader Kyle "strongly" suggested that I profile Talented, an addon that replaces your talent interface and opens up some extended features for talent planning.

Considering the tone of his suggestion, I would venture to say that Kyle has grown frustrated by his fellow players' tendency to screw up their builds or they're taking too long to respec. This can, indeed, become an issue when one is respeccing for raiding, arenas and different roles for hybrids.

This is where Talented, and its companion Talented_Data, can save you time and a little money if you're prone to selecting the wrong talents when you're in a hurry. This addon allows you to build talent templates, which can be applied via one click after a talent wipe. I do this when I switch from a PvE Retribution spec to Holy for progression nights or arenas. I have to say, it helps reduce the risk of mistakes, which can leave me free to spend more time remembering to grab the correct gear out of the bank.

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The Creamy GUI Center: Big bag blowout Part II

Matthew Porter — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: AddOns, Features, The Creamy GUI Center

Welcome readers to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. It looks like I stumbled upon an addon topic that, judging from your comments, a lot of people view as a cornerstone of their UI and addon experience. This week, thanks to reader feedback, I'm going to extend our look at inventory addons to three parts instead of two so that we can take a look at a couple of fan favorite bag addons that I missed. I did indeed hear your cries of wanting more in the comments, so let's get down to it with a look at ArkInventory and TBag.

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WowAceUpdater goes the way of the dodo

Alex Ziebart — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, Expansions

At noon today, Kaelten of WowAce fame posted a thread on the WowAce forums discussing the future of their massively popular project. There's quite a bit of nitty gritty coder lingo that you don't really need to know unless you're involved in WowAce, but there's other important information for us normal folk, too.

First, a few obvious things are pointed out. One, WowAce became big. Really, really big, and I imagine much bigger than they had ever imagined. The way WowAce is set up doesn't work so well with that much of a load and that many mods and packages being developed. Additionally, the amount of bandwidth they used monthly is absolutely enormous.

To quote: "As it currently stands files.wowace.com pushes out an incredible amount of addon updates. In an average month we're talking about more than thirty terabytes of data! In a busy month clearing sixty is no problem, and I don't even want to talk about what happens on major patch days."

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Patches, addons and drama in the forums

Amanda Miller — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Blizzard, AddOns, Humor, Forums

While surfing the forums this morning, I came across a little gem of a thread protesting against Blizzard for the following:

Breaking "our" addons and mods.
Incorporating features from popular addons into the default User Interface, and thus breaking addons and mods. There's also a sentiment that Blizzard is "stealing" these ideas rather than being innovators.
Fixing "their" bugs which in turn breaks "our" addons and mods. The suggestion is that they don't care, or could take steps to prevent this.

As you can imagine, all sorts of responses cropped up, including the usual people who get into arguments with other posters, players in agreement, joking and sarcastic responses, and of course, an awesome string of blue responses.

Gallery: Patch drama

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Addon Spotlight: TourGuide (UPDATED)

Sean Forsgren — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight, Leveling

Amid the madness of yesterday's patch, there has been some desperate drama happening in the official UI & Macros Forums. It seems the massively popular leveling addon QuestHelper has encountered some troubles, with many users not able to use their beloved quest... helper.

As with many crossroads in life, this presents an opportunity to consider a change, or at least a reason to try something else out while the developer of QuestHelper figures out the disconnect. Some time ago, I stopped using the memory-hogging giant in favor of one of Tekkub's creations. TourGuide may very well be Tekkub's greatest mod to date. It serves much the same function as QuestHelper, but it takes a different approach, one that doesn't eat up nearly as much memory. To me, it was sort of like selling my huge truck for a fast, agile Subaru. (Which I did in RL, yay!)

I've been promising to profile this bad boy for a couple of months now, as I've yet to finish my own work on it, but I felt like you all needed an alternative. Besides, you may end up swearing by TourGuide like I do, it was more my style. (I've been working on a guide for TourGuide, but my day job has been bogging me down.)

TourGuide is more akin to a traditional leveling guide than the so-called smart system of QuestHelper. With the "helper", I felt like I wasn't doing quests in the right order, at the right level and that I was missing out on some great quest chains.

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Titan Panel's perpetual GM ticket

Michael Gray — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:00:00 EST

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, News items, AddOns

Brad Justice (let me say that again, Brad Justice!) sent us a valuable tip about Titan Panel, and it's easily confirmed by a casual look over at the official forums. Let me explain. No, there is too much -- let me sum up.

If you use Titan Panel, you may see an unexplainable GM ticket open in the upper right corner of your screen. You may open that empty ticket, and then Abandon it. Your attempt will fail. But don't worry -- it's not your fault. It's Titan Panel. That ticket will linger there like some kind of horrific nightmare. But there's hope.

You can either simply disable the AddOn until they get the problem sorted out or attempt a "full UI reset." (A full UI reset is the process by which you basically delete the WTF folder, Cache, and Interface folders and more or less start all over again.) I personally went for the slightly less-intense "disable" option.

Anyway, good luck fixing it -- we just wanted to let you know this is what's up, since Titan Panel's pretty popular.

Edit: With a ninja-like quickness, Titan Panel has released an update which should help clear this up.

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Reader UI of the Week: Osullavan of Eldre'Thalas

Adam Holisky — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, Reader UI of the Week

World of Warcraft allows all of us an unprecedented ability to modify our user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh and detailed look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it, along with your character name and server, to readerui@gmail.com.

This week I want to take a break from reader submitted user interfaces and profile my own. Pictured above is a compilation of what I like to call "my baby." It's a UI that's taken me over a year to perfect, and I like it quite a bit. What we'll do is take a look at the philosophy behind the interface and what addons I use.

I wear many hats in my guild. I'm the GM, the main tank, and help drive the raids. My UI serves me well in all these roles, and it allows me a plethora of options at my disposal. My multiple duties in my guild means that I not only have to be fully accountable for everything the boss does to me (and for a tank in and end game guild that's a lot), but I also have to keep an eye on everything else that is happening in the raid.

The Philosophy Behind My UI

Information and functions need to be easy to access, and be accessed quickly. In addition to the ease of use, it is vital to have a clear view of the play field when engaging in raids and groups. When getting the raid ready and driving the trash pulls, I need to be able to see everything and hear everything. It's unacceptable to have information more than a click away - if that. If someone sends me a tell, I want to know about it right away, and if someone dies I want to see it in bright colors in my chat windows.

Since my in-game responsibilities are numerous, I have to be able quickly switch between them. To do this I have to utilize both my keyboard and my mouse.

Gallery: Reader UI of the Week gallery

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Addon Spotlight: PallyPower

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, AddOns, Raiding, AddOn Spotlight, Buffs, Battlegrounds

Today I thought we'd look at an addon that many guilds require their paladins to use. To be honest, I'd never really understood why until I transitioned to 25-man content. Coordinating blessings with one other paladin (our Karazhan runs rarely had more than two paladins.) was never complicated, but when you've got three or more paladins, it can get messy and can waste valuable raid time.

As my guild continues its efforts in The Eye and Serpent Shrine Cavern, I've found myself somewhat frustrated by paladins who don't use this one. Granted, I was that guy until recently, thinking that because ZOMG Buffs played nice with buff assignments via PallyPower, that I was good to go. Now suddenly I'm taking a more active role in buff assignments and realize that like Omen, Healbot and logging for WWS, the more players using a utility, the better.

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Addon Spotlight: Four for the Fourth

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight

Welcome to another installment of Addon Spotlight. Today I thought I'd present you with four addons that make minor changes to your UI while providing little or no additional functionality. Call these vanity addons if you like, although you may find one or more of them actually useful.

In the spirit of the holiday weekend (for those of us in the U.S.), I thought I would start with some color-oriented addons. I use these almost entirely for the sheer joy of some more bright colors on the screen, but I as I always say, having a quick visual reference to information adheres to the simple but powerful UI philosophy that less is more.

oGlow is a very simple addon that does one thing, it lights up the icon border of an item with the color matching it's quality. As my paladin's character pane shows, epic items are brightly lit with a purple border, rare items are blue and green items are green. (Okay, no green items there, but you get the point.) I think I replaced that green item with my Medallion of the Horde last week, am I supposed to get a pen for being green-free or something? The only real use I have gotten from this, aside from a pretty glow, is being able to quickly assess another player's gear while inspecting them. I would like to think I am able to tell this by just looking at them, but I like to snoop anyway.

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The Creamy GUI Center: Big bag blowout

Matthew Porter — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:15:00 EST

Filed under: AddOns, Features, The Creamy GUI Center

Welcome folks to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. This week I tackle one of the great suggestions left by you the reader in the comment's section. We're gunna examine bag replacements and inventory managers in a special two part series. This week we'll see how to organize your inventory with bag replacement addons. And in the following week we'll look at which addons help you change gear around for different situations. But let's not put the cart ahead of the horse, first we have to organize all that equipment, so let's get to it!

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Addon Spotlight: OPie (UPDATED)

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, AddOn Spotlight

Ladies and gentlemen, I rarely get very excited about new addons, but OPie has revolutionized my UI in a way that absolutely fits with my clutter-free mindset. Ultimately, as I test addons, only a few end up being a permanent part of my gameplay. I can't necessarily promise OPie will stay, but it's looking like such an innovative mod that I may just come to rely on it.

We've discussed both Totemus and Necrosis here at Addon Spotlight, and praised the way they wrap things into a neat little package. OPie does the same thing, but to an extent that not only are your spells hidden until you need them, but they can be easily integrated with a minimalist play-style.

What OPie does is take spells, items, trade-skills and macros and creates virtual rings for them to reside in. By assigning a keybinding, one can simply press a button and have a quick menu (a ring) appear on the screen, which will cast a spell, use an item or a macro based on where the mouse is hovering in relation to the ring.

Continue reading Addon Spotlight: OPie (UPDATED)

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The Creamy GUI Center: Combat Log-o-rama

Matthew Porter — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:30:00 EST

Filed under: How-tos, AddOns, Features, The Creamy GUI Center

Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.

Howdy folks, and welcome to this week's The Creamy GUI Center. Before we get neck deep in addons this week I'd like to say thank you all for the encouraging words and warm welcome back left in the comments last week. Also in the coming weeks look for some of your suggested topics to be covered. But I digress, let's get back to this week's topic, the combat log and its addons. There's something for everyone this week as I show you alternative and supplimental addons to the combat log, and for the minimalists out there I'll show you how to add some bling to your combat log without needing any third party additions. Let's get started!

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The Creamy GUI Center: Resurrected and back in action

Matthew Porter — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: AddOns, The Creamy GUI Center

Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.

No you're not seeing things, The Creamy GUI Center is back! As my first column back after such a long time I thought it would be a good idea to get reacquainted, and take a look at what all has changed in WoW's user interface while I was gone. Also, find out where I've been all this time, and where we're going as we take a sneak peak at what's in store for future editions. So grab a drink and get comfy as we once again take the plunge into the world of WoW's user interface and addons.

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Addon Spotlight: TipTac

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight

Welcome to the Father's Day edition of Addon Spotlight. I honestly tried to think about an addon that would match the holiday theme for all of thirty seconds before deciding to just write about an addon I've found to very useful. (Although perhaps you got your Dad some tools, or your Dad is a tool, so take it for what its worth.)

TipTac is a tooltip mod that adds a load of features to the little informative frames that appear when you hover over characters and objects in the game. As I've implied before, I enjoy quick and easy visual references to important information. This includes a character's class, health and reaction. (in the case of NPC's)

TipTac provides another way to discern details; a redundancy I embrace for the sake of easy targeting and planning.

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Yet another character manager for WoW

Natalie Mootz — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Odds and ends, AddOns, Quests

Magelo, a Switzerland and UK based company which gained popularity with its Everquest character profiles, has launched a WoW version of the profile system. It offers a slick view of your toon's Armory information, but with some additional functionality that you can usually only get in-game. Additionally, using their Magelo Sync, you can hot-sync your information whenever you want. (No more waiting for the Armory to update.) You can also use the client in-game to find information on items, quests, and mobs.

I tried it today and found it fun to play with. Even though installing everything takes a bit of jumping through hoops, after you've synced, you can view everything about your toon that you can see in the game: bank and inventory contents, or show anyone your profile with a link. Here's Slig's profile so you can see the output provided.

A feature I really liked was the tab called "bonuses" which lets you see which pieces of armor contribute to each attribute (e.g., click Intellect and see each item's bonus to that stat). After the beta there will be a charge for Premium access -- a trend we're seeing more of -- which involves things like getting a certified profile, customizing your profile page with backgrounds, viewing your toon in 3D, and creating alternate profiles. I liked fiddling around with the alternates but I'm not sure I'd pay extra for it when the time comes.

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Addon Spotlight: AuditorFu

Sean Forsgren — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Economy, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight, Making money

It's Friday, which means that it's payday for some of you. With that in mind, why don't we take a look at an addon that helps you stay on top of your virtual finances. For those of us who are not only information junkies, but also control freaks, this addon is a great way to maintain sovereignty over how your gold comes and goes.

AuditorFu, contrary to what the name implies, will function with or without the Fubar addon. However, I find it best suited as a center-aligned, top-bar, Fubar mod, as it allows me to see the important stuff at center stage. (Alongside AuldLangSyne) There's nothing worse than having an inflated view of your gold total and quickly realizing the mats for your Red Belt of Battle are out of reach.

The good news is that this addon can help you be more diligent if you're saving for a crafted epic or your Artisan Riding skill. Every copper counts, my friends.

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Addon Spotlight: Fuzzy Logic

Sean Forsgren — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight

Welcome to a special "maintenance day" edition of Addon Spotlight. Today, we're going to take a look at one more Hunter specific mod, wrapping up my week of hunter love. Thus far, we've taken a (another) look at Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic and some off-the-beaten-path macros. I'm going to, once again, feature an addon that integrates macros into the major functionality and one written by my favorite developer: the ever-candid Tekkub.

True to form, Tekkub wrote this addon to be simple, efficient and easy to use. The aptly named Fuzzy Logic is a macro-based addon that will react differently based on the current status of you and your pet. As with many of Tekkub's Random Crap, this addon works with pretty much no memory footprint, and very little setup required.

What I love most about this type of addon is how much they add to my own gameplay while asking so little in return. I use this, amongst others, so often during my daily grind (when I get around to rolling my Hunter), that I can't imagine life without them. In a sense, Fuzzy Logic has become part of my own "default UI".

~~Come on back after the jump for Tekkub's description and how to configure this one.~~ (Just for you, Tekkub)

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Addon Spotlight: Fizzwidget's Feed-O-Matic

Sean Forsgren — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight

It's been awhile since we talked about Gazmik Fizzwidget's little trinkets. As I promised in this week's Macro Anatomy, here is an addon designed specifically for Hunters and their pets.

Feed-O-Matic handles feeding your pet, automating the process of opening your bag, finding food and stuffing into your pets face. The part I find most useful is the reminder it creates for feeding my hungry wolf. I've configured the addon to create an emote when I feed my pet, just so everyone knows how humane I am in my treatment of a pet I ask to fight on my behalf. (Ironic I know, but it helps me sleep at night.)

You can configure this addon to avoid foods needed for quests, anything that provides a "Well-Fed" buff and/or is used for Cooking recipes. You have complete control over what food your pet is allowed to eat, through a series of slash commands, so with just a bit of configuration Feed-O-Matic can streamline the entire process.

Come back after the break for some tips on setting up your new pet-feeding addon.

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Curse CEO hints at 'premium subscription' coming later this year

Natalie Mootz — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: News items, AddOns

CEO and founder of Curse.com Hubert Thieblot revealed this week that Curse plans to launch a premium subscription service later this year. The service would cost $4 per month and is slated for release some time in July 2008. Thieblot mentioned the new service last Tuesday at a social media conference hosted by Under the Radar. Curse hopes to get 35,000 subscribers to the new paid service by the end of 2008, working up to a total of 100,000 members by the end of 2009. The conference presentation is available on YouTube, but unless you're a masochist or a business conference groupie, you should only watch the video if you have insomnia.

We have no idea what this premium content entails -- what you see in the presentation slide is all we've got to go on -- but it's a good bet that it will be out-of-game services. Maybe something like Armory data, player profiles, or even some kind of addon profiling system. Will it be worth another $4 a month on top of what we already pay for WoW? We'll have to wait and see.

Update: Mr. Thieblot has commented below and said that whatever the service offers will be "nothing that has been hinted at so far."

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Scattered Shots: Levels 10-20 and the art of staying smart

David Bowers — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:55:00 EST

Filed under: Hunter, AddOns, Leveling, (Hunter) Scattered Shots

Scatered Shots is for da inteligent peepul who knows what hunters is good at.

We started off this column talking about the very first levels you go through as a hunter, from one to ten, and from there we got off onto other topics, such as getting your first pet, controlling it well, managing your threat, using crowd control, and other things all hunters must learn as we level up. But we talked about all these things in the abstract, not in the context of actually leveling up, the specific abilities you'll get, and how that'll change the way you play.

So today I'll start up the leveling train again, from levels 10 to 20, and we'll have a closer look at how these general ideas fit in to that period of your hunting career. Except for the sheer time investment involved, the hardest part of hunter leveling is already over once you reach level 10 and get your pet, and that makes this the most dangerous time for a hunter, when we are most likely to fall into lazy hunting habits and neglect the opportunity for complexity that shows up later on. Whereas before you had to work hard to stay out of your enemy's melee range, now it's a simple three-step process:

Send in your pet for the attack.
Shoot.
Profit.

It is so incredibly simple that idiots can do it. In fact, idiots do do it, and therein lies the problem. We have to do something while leveling to keep our complex hunter brain synapses firing fast don't we? Just what can you do with all the abilities you get at this stage?

Continue reading Scattered Shots: Levels 10-20 and the art of staying smart

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